Radical proposal to solve gameplay and instruction issues

[grant2004]

A 2-3 day window is reasonable for a session to be scheduled.

But the idea of posting polls outside of a designated window being illegal is not the kind of change I believe will help, a simple poll is enough to fix a political dispute if a citizen is allowed to post it, we've seen that twice in this DG, and as I recall both of those polls came very near to a scheduled play session, would they be illegal under this idea? Don't expect that a schedule for meta game actions will end all political disputes.

 

[DaveShack]

I think this is trying to fix the wrong problem. A game which has few participants needs to have relatively few, but well-stated rules. The more "process" we put on things, the fewer people are going to continue to have fun. Pretty soon there won't be a demogame anymore.

 

[Provolution]

The weakness was in the arbitration mechanism and the handling of tied polls. we need clear rules for these procedures to effectively end the extreme version of "meta-game" we currently experience. One method could be to delay the option (or for a tie in a technology poll, only get gold until the issue is settled, or other means to handle a tie, leader of nations breaks it and so on).

Yes, late illegal repolls would not be ok. But then again, this would hurt that official/citizens in later elections/polls. We should remove mechanisms that promote undue delay and replace these mechanisms with crystal clear groundrules handling these eventualities with clear and immediate outcomes.

A schedule handling meta-game actions is not meant to handle all political disputes, but to put them in a fair, transparent and effective format that allows also new players to see what is going on. Right now it is simply too personal, chaotic, anarcho-liberal and generally fluid and disorganized. I see some here would like that to go on, but some of us would like a permanent end to that mess. I was never a fan of lazy, organizational thinking.

I would say 48 hours window should be fair, and first taker of the DP pool (to be reduced from 6 to 4) would be the one to play the session. Yes, we need to let the DPs self constitute themselves, and not follow the number of votes, which is sort of childish and does not allow to fit the sessions into the best schedules. We also need a chain of command to handle difficult DPs with a lot of "real life", special agendas, bad internet and dysfunctional computer. If someone got a messy life or bad technology, they should probably serve the game in a different capacity.

Even if we are few participants, I think we all deserve good order and good flows, not anarcho-liberal chaos. I am sure ratings will go up as soon the procedures get more predictable, fair, transparent and intuitive.